Two hands covered with wrinkles, guiding people with his own light-yellow taxi. Routinely, Mr. Yu drove from Chongming Island to downtown Shanghai. Beneath the towers of Lujiazui, he had carried countless passengers, each with their own destination, while his own heart remained anchored to the small island across the water.  “If I am at the place where I work, my home is somewhere else, where pressure and anxiety are nowhere to be found.” Here, he wakes up before the sun rise

“I never wanted to be strong,” she told me. “I just had to be.” She sat on the sofa, and the light glimmered on her face. There was something steady in her presence, the calm of someone who had seen storms and learned to stand through them. She was my grandmother’s longtime friend and former business partner, and, about a decade ago, she also lived in the apartment on the floor just above ours. She is a Shanghainese and grew up in a Western-style townhouse in Shikumen on Wes

The Shanghai International Youth Orchestra is warming up. The sound is a familiar chaos to Ms. Liu—a cacophony of scales, the thump of a bass line, the lyrical sigh of a flute finding its pitch. She moves through it all not as a performer, but as a force of calm. Her hands, adorned only with a simple silver ring, are constantly in motion: straightening a stack of sheet music, typing a last-minute email, gently guiding a nervous cellist towards their seat. Ms. Liu is the orche

After yesterday's interview, on my way back to the dorm, Kirara suddenly came to mind again. The professor had asked me, “How do you define art?” I paused, and my mind flashed through countless images. The clearest one was the lawn at Brown University, with her sitting beside me, sketching formulas on blades of grass with her pen. I told the professor, “To me, art is humanity's way of communicating with the world. It's not merely an expression of emotion, but an attempt at un

I got to know Celeste as a family friend. My father and she were classmates in university, and we played football together. In our conversations, we would jump from Chinese to English, and occasionally Spanish, her native language. As a Bolivian living thousands of miles from home, Celeste truly embodied how diversity isn’t just a word, but the experience of learning, adapting, and growing in a place that is foreign yet somehow familiar. “Cultural diversity,” she explained in

French winters are always damp and cold, like a fine mist that silently creeps into your collar from the street corners and seeps into...

Every morning at six, Mr. Xiong starts his taxi. By 10 p.m., he’ll finally call it a day. Sixteen hours, one seat, hundreds of brief...

"We promised each other as kids and said we'd be friends for life, and now it looks like their anticipation has laid a steady path...

Striking out onto YuYuan Road, I encountered a figure who has called this bustling city home for over two decades. With a warm smile and...

The clouds were tinted in soft shades of rose and tangerine, brushed by the late afternoon sun as it slowly dipped behind the Shanghai...

Laughing, smiling, and a pony doll leaning back on the bench beside them, I met a group of friends who have known each other for decades....

To many, the life of a model looks like glamour, travel, and flashing cameras. For Ceren, a Turkish model working in Shanghai, it often...

I met Mei in a cozy morning in Zhongshan Park, where tender raindrops caressed the green petals of tulips. He was playing football with...

It’s difficult to imagine a fishing village and market town transforming to today’s megacity simply in a few decades’ time. Shanghai’s...

At dawn, as soft hues of gold and lavender began to paint the sky, I entered Zhongshan Park, a verdant park nestled in the heart of...

We met Ms. Zhang in Zhongshan Park, nestled within the Changning District. She paused in Shanghai on a business trip, taking a break from...

Entering Zhongshan Park, a full image of green ornamented with red dots unfolded in my sight. Though the sky was not in a good mood, it...

Amid a bed of blooming flowers, the morning breeze carried the faint sweetness of petals. Golden sunlight dappled the bench in Zhongshan...

The words flowed from the tongue of a seasoned traveler, a scholar who had journeyed far beyond the shores of the Atlantic, whom we...

"Looking at the children realizing their dreams on different platforms, our cultural and creative incubation base is also at the...